The Chronological (Offspring) Protection Conjecture Experiment
by Zagzagael
Summary: Sheldon builds a time machine and brings someone from the not-so-distant future into the present. There is a time travel conundrum and consequences.
1. Chapter 1

"_Dry Lightning_ is a misnomer," Sheldon instructed Leonard and Howard and Raj. "Lightning is neither wet nor dry. And there is, actually, precipitation being produced, it's just not reaching the ground."

All but Sheldon had their shoulders up around their ears as the dry lightning arced across the wide sky in brilliant jagged illuminations accompanied by synchronized earsplitting thunder. The storm was directly overhead. Between lightning flashes, the nightlights of Pasadena were reflecting off the ceiling of pyrocumulus clouds. Static electricity crackled among the four men as they stood on Sheldon and Leonard's apartment building roof. As a group they were gathered around a whirring machine that appeared to be a gas-powered lawnmower. It was, in fact, a gas-powered lawnmower rebuilt as a time machine to Sheldon's specifications, ready to cut through the time-space continuum as efficiently as swathing through a particularly dense patch of crabgrass.

They were wearing rubber wellingtons and yellow elbow-length kitchen gloves. Sheldon was crouched down on his haunches beside the machine, long fingers moving deftly, even in the unwieldy gloves, over a touch screen that had been made part of the machine. A countdown clock digitally ticked towards midnight in the corner of the computer monitor. He stood, cracking his lower back with a fist against his spine as he stretched. He indicated to Leonard who leaned over, put a booted foot up on the machine and pulled the starter cord. It roared to life. Howard and Raj extended a long aluminum rod and slotted it into a holder welded to the side of the machine.

Sheldon bent forward, tapping a green button on the monitor with his knuckle and stepped back. "All systems go," he said. In retrospect, he should have said -

_**Foo, bar, baz and qux (alternatively, quux)!**_

The sky opened, lightning found the rod, the rooftop exploded in white light, and the time machine detonated as though wired for destruction. And exactly two point three Mississippi's later the acoustic radiation produced by the thermal channel process cracked in an ear-splitting shock wave right above their heads.

Then an eerie kind of quiet settled over the San Gabriel Valley, juxtaposing with the ringing in their ears. They were standing amidst twisted metal bits and pieces, wires and motherboards, smoking and still curling. Their nose hairs had been singed, it would be weeks of thorough nose-blowing before any of them truly rid their nasal passages of the sickly sweet odor of ozone. Sheldon would even dedicate one whiteboard to the chemical formula for lightning moving through the air, splitting molecules into 2 O atoms which then react with O2 to form O3.

But at that moment, before any of them could speak, the sound of female crying carried itself within their earshot. Each one of them shook his head like a dog after bath-time.

"Uh, Sheldon?" Leonard asked.

"Yes, I hear it." Sheldon answered in a clipped tone. "I just can't see anything as a result of the over-saturation of our retinal pigment."

"Just say flash blindness," Leonard said with a nervous note in place of his usual long suffering impatience.

"Is it coming from over behind that bulwark?" Howard asked, taking a tentative step towards the far corner of the roof.

"That low wall is not a bulwark. This is not a ship." Sheldon replied. He cocked his head, closed his eyes and listened hard.

"Okay, but still, it is behind that wall. Whatever _it_ is." Even tense, Howard still managed to sound petulant.

"No," the tall scientist replied. "It's actually right over there where the major portions of the time machine landed as it broke apart." He pointed to a shape bundled onto the ground twenty feet from where the group was standing. "I'm quite certain we have not impaired ourselves with keratoconjunctivitis photoelectrica. My pigment is returning to normal. I'll need to make notes regarding the usage of proper eye protection for next time."

Raj began to object to future experimentation but Leonard interrupted him with a hand on his arm. "Should we-" Leonard's voice was shaking. "It could be-" he hesitated, "something bad."

Sheldon stood frozen by the destruction of his time machine, the cracking of the thunder, the brilliant illumination of the sky and now the sound of crying. Suddenly he jerked himself into movement. "Yes, it could be something very bad indeed." Hands fisting slightly at his sides. "But if we brought it here; we need to deal with this. Responsibly." He began striding forward. "Even if it has the power to suck our brains out through our optic canals."

Howard and Leonard looked around frantically, each grabbing a piece of the aluminum lightning rod that now lay scattered across the roof top. Raj fell into step behind them and the three walked single file after Sheldon.

Sheldon slowed as they approached. The sobbing was definitely tinged with fear. He felt a strange frisson of empathy move through his body. "We come in peace," he offered haltingly. The crying stopped at once as though turned off by the sound of his voice.

They were standing shoulder to shoulder now. The shape was clearly that of a human being.

A blonde head peeked up over her shoulder. Two long Heidi braids framed an elfish face. She climbed up into a crouch, and then stood haltingly. A tween-sized girl. Each of the boys excepting Sheldon took a giant step backwards. She was clad in jean short shorts and a colorful t-shirt emblazoned with what appeared to be a cartoon Valkyrie. She swiped a quick hand across her eyes, once, twice, and then taking an audible deep breath asked, "What happened? Did it work? Am I here?"

Howard and Raj's mouths snapped shut with loud synchronized clicks. Sheldon narrowed his eyes.

Leonard cleared his throat. "Uh, I'm not sure what you mean exactly. You're on the roof of an apartment building in Pasadena."

The girl looked at him, and then squinted, a thoughtful expression on her face.

Sheldon spoke. "Are you-" he paused, something about the child seemed familiar. "Do you live in the building?"

With a squeal of sheer relief, she launched herself at him. Acting on instincts he would reason out later, he opened his arms and caught her. She clung to him tightly. "It worked, Dad, it worked!"

And then she drooped in his shocked embrace, unconscious.


	2. Chapter 2

"_**Here's the thing. Girls like Penny never end up with guys who own time machines."  
**_  
Howard and Raj ran ahead to insure the stairs were clear and to open the apartment door. Sheldon was descending with the girl in his arms, still unconscious. He was walking as though he was carrying a basket full of incubating pterodactyl eggs. Leonard took up the rear, shutting the rooftop door behind them and following the unbelievable sight of his lanky room-mate with his arms full of a young girl. A girl who had just accused him of fatherhood.

In the apartment, Sheldon kicked the coffee table aside and knelt down to gently lie the girl on the sofa.

Crouched beside her, he reached up tentatively and brushed a strand of hair out of her face, his fingers lingering on the cool skin of her forehead. Long moments passed. He studied the shape of her cheeks, the bow of her upper lip, the lobe of her ear. Finally, he stood.

"We should," he paused looking around the room, the beginnings of confusion on his face. "We need, perhaps, a cold compress."

"Let me," Howard said and disappeared down the hallway.

Across the hall, Penny's door slammed open and suddenly she was standing in the boys' apartment, hands wringing slightly. "Was that giant explosion you guys? Are you alright?"

She paused and each of them looked at her with sidelong glances, the three of them a solid wall in front of the sofa. Howard returned with a wet washcloth, handing it to Sheldon who folded it once, twice, into a long rectangle and bent forward to place it on the girl's forehead. Beneath his hand, she groaned in a small voice.

"What on earth?!" Penny gasped and took a step forward between Leonard and Sheldon. "Who is this girl?" she asked all of them, concern and accusation in her voice.

"Apparently-" Howard began but Leonard shushed him.

Sheldon straightened to his full height and Penny stepped up beside him. "Sheldon?" she asked quietly.

He cleared his throat. "This girl, this child, is-" He cut himself off, looking down at the girl and biting the inside corner of his lip. Then he squared his shoulders and began again. "I brought this child from the future into the past. Our present."

"Oh, okay, that's who she is." Penny rolled her eyes and sat on the edge of the sofa, flipping the cold compress on the child's forehead and pressing it lightly with her fingertips. In the same move as Sheldon, she brushed the errant strand of blonde hair back behind the girl's ear, smoothing it into place gently. "Really. Who is she, why is she on your sofa, and is she okay?"

Howard began to giggle manically. Leonard and Raj shot him a look and he clapped both hands over his mouth.

Sheldon crouched back down beside the girl's head, his knee brushing Penny's knees but he didn't move his leg away. "Two weeks ago," he began. "I woke from what appeared in the immediacy of the moment to be a vivid dream, it was 3:17 in the morning, in which I was in deep conversation with myself. It was not, however, a dream. It was, in fact, a meeting with a future self that had traveled back in time to tell me something of the utmost importance."

"Do we really have time for this? Sheldon? Leonard?" Penny's voice was impatient and lined with the smallest bit of fear.

"I think so, yes," Leonard answered.

Beneath Penny's hand, the girl stirred and Sheldon leaned forward, his knee pressing distinctly against Penny's knee now and he quietly hushed the girl. "It's alright, there there. I'm here."

"Sheldon?" Penny's voice had moved into threatening.

Sheldon sat back on his haunches and held up both hands. "Please listen, Penny. I know who this girl is."

"And I'm waiting. See if you can tell me before the cops get here."

"Why on Earth would the police come here?" He was surprised.

"Because I'm going to dial 911 if this story doesn't get to the point like yesterday."

He nodded, solemn, curling his upper lip between his teeth. "It is curious that you're referencing a colloquial desire for time travel expressed in idiomatic vernacular." He held his hand up as she began to splutter. "Yes, yes, I'll get to the point. But let me arrive there following my own map, if you will."

"So, you had a dream. And you were talking with your future self." Leonard hurried him.

"I was. Indeed. My future self was very much like my present self. I was reassured to see that I don't succumb to the middle aged paunch. I was a bit grey, but it was dignified, just here," he brushed the hair at his temples back. "I wanted, as I'm sure you can surmise, to glean from my future self details about a possible successful Nobel Prize bid. And not surprisingly, I do, in fact, win the Nobel Prize with my work on time travel."

Howard and Raj stood looking between the girl on the couch and Sheldon.

"Sheldon," Penny warned softly.

He looked at her, his gaze intense, and then looked back down at the girl. "But actually that was not why my future self traveled back in time. I told myself, by that I mean, my future self informed my now self, that it was necessary for me to manipulate the temporal paradox in which I affect events from my own life and that it is going to be proven true, by myself no less, that time travel can only extend to the life span. That is to say, the limits of one's own existence. To do otherwise would be to evince time obsolete and that, of course, would render time travel impossible as then, quite obviously, there would no longer be a construct recognized as time. And, on this point, my future self was adamant, one can only travel back in time, but it then follows that the past can be manipulated to affect the future."

He beamed, looking around at each face. Leonard looked flustered and Howard and Raj were nodding sagely.

Penny's face had gone slack. "You lost me. Where's the point you said you were going to get to?"

"I woke. As though from a dream. But," he held up his index finger, "on my bedside table was my notebook. Open and filled with a quickly scribbled technical diagram designed to engineer a small time travel machine. Of course the handwriting was recognizable as my own, my future self had written it. Also, noted was the date and time at which I was to attempt to use the machine I built from the specs from the future in order to successfully rend the time space continuum of my own life in the now. And that date and time was," he looked at his wristwatch, "seventeen minutes ago."

"WHO is this girl, Sheldon?" Penny hissed.

"My daughter."

It took a moment for Penny to register this, but she pursed her lips, closed her eyes which could still be seen to roll behind her eyelids. Then she popped her eyes open wide and said with expressive jazz hands, "BAZINGA!"

"Uh, Penny," Leonard began but just at that moment the girl stirred beside Penny and Sheldon.

Her eyes fluttered open. She looked up at Penny and a 200-watt smile lit up her face. "Mom?"


	3. Chapter 3

_**Same paradox—if you were to travel back in time and, say, knock me unconscious, you would not then have the conversation that irritated you, motivating you to go back and knock me unconscious.**_

Penny stared down at the girl who was looking up at her with what was quite obviously Sheldon Cooper's genetic eye color and shape but that aside, there was a strangely disturbing familiarity in the brilliant smile that had nothing to do with the whack-a-doodle physicist. Although, admittedly, said whack had a somewhat amazing grin himself when he chose to flash it, and, Penny faltered mentally, where in the heck had _that_ random thought come from?

The girl lifted her arms around Penny's waist and hugged her awkwardly but tight. "Dad really did it, Mom. He really did."

"Of course he did, sweetie." With great care and tenderness Penny extricated herself from the girl's embrace and stood. The girl reached for her hand and Penny allowed this. She struggled to sit up but Sheldon shook his head in the negative and she lay still.

Penny looked from one face to another to another until her gaze finally settled on Sheldon. He looked slightly guilty. "This isn't funny, guys."

Raj and Howard slowly released one another from the panicked clinch they had instantly locked themselves into. Leonard had staggered backwards and was splayed into an approximation of a seated posture on his desk chair. All three were shaking their heads and Leonard had begun to knuckle the ribs over his heart.

"Guys?" Penny's voice had lost its edge of outrage and was moving into slightly hysteric.

"Penny, again, if allowed, I can shed light on what certainly must be a surprising situation."

She gently shook her hand free from the girl's hold and held it up at him, the universal sign for stop already before I punch you in the throat. "All the genius gobbleygook in Texas couldn't shed light on this or why any of you think this is funny. And I can't believe you've roped some innocent kid into your ridiculous prank."

"Please, Dad," the girl was sitting and then standing. She was as tall as Penny and Penny took a deliberate step sideways inadvertently moving up against Sheldon. "You said that Mom might schizz out." She turned to Penny. "Actually he said in all likelihood you might experience an intense and prolonged discharge of the locus ceruleus which would then activate the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. The activation of the sympathetic nervous system could very well lead to the release of noradrenaline from nerve endings acting on" she counted off on her fingers, " your heart, blood vessels, respiratory centers, and other sites. The ensuing physiological changes would constitute an acute stress response." With an exaggerated sigh and a charming eye roll she smiled at both Penny and Sheldon. "But honestly, a freak out is a freak out, right? Right."

Penny's eyes had grown wider and rounder and slowly she nodded. In an uncharacteristic move, Sheldon took Penny by the elbow and gently steered her into sitting in the place the girl had just vacated. The fact that it was his spot paled beside the fact that it was still radiating body heat. Penny grabbed for the washcloth the girl was holding out to her and slapped it over her own eyes. "Wake up, Penny, wake up," she mumbled under her breath.

The girl looked at Sheldon and pulled a long face that was filled with concern. "Dad?" she said quietly.

Leonard jumped to his feet. "That's enough of that." Sheldon and the girl turned identical expressions on him and he gestured apologetically with both hands. "I mean, for right now. That's enough of "Dad" and "Mom". You passed out. Are you alright?"

She nodded at this. "Yeah, no. I'm not sure. I do feel a bit abnormal, definitely an atypical sensation, Uncle Len." Quickly she covered her mouth with her long fingers. "Oops. Sorry, sorry."

"Uncle Len?" Leonard was astonished. "How do you know my name?"

"Leonard." Sheldon said, his voice sharp and irritated. "What do you mean by atypical? Have you time traveled before?"

She shook her head. "No, but we extrapolated after experimenting with Bam-Bam," she looked around the room, smiling an explanation, "my hairless rat, that I would feel dizzy and probably nauseated. I don't. But I do feel," she paused as though searching for the correct description, "strange?"

"That might not be good. Why don't you sit back down." Howard had moved forward and was indicating the chair beside Penny's head. "I've gone to space and I do know a little bit about spacefaring and deconditioning. Do you have a headache? Any vision issue? Joint pain?"

"Howard. I appreciate your experience and desire to assist, but certainly I would not deign to send my own child back in time if there was any possibility of deconditioning or serious travel sickness or resultant medical repercussions."

"I would hope not!" Penny was sitting up now, looking at the girl through narrowed eyes. "Tell us how exactly you feel. Raj, can you get a glass of water for her please?"

"Shouldn't we offer her a cup of tea? Preferably ginger?" Sheldon interjected and Penny shook her head no to Raj.

Raj went to the kitchen for the water.

Leonard seated himself in the middle of the couch, hands splayed on his thighs, quietly asking himself, "How did she know my name? Uncle Len?"

Sheldon snapped, "Oh, Leonard, please stop that. You know how she knows your name. She's my daughter from the future." He took the proffered glass of water from Raj and handed it to the girl. She drank deeply, nearly finishing it in one gulping swallow.

"Aren't you forgetting a somewhat important twist, Sheldon? She's not just your daughter. From the future, is she?" Leonard replied a bit testily.

Sheldon looked at Penny. His gaze was open but deeply observational. She turned her head slowly and returned the long look.

"I'm not really supposed to be interacting with all of you," the girl said quietly. "Dad isn't quite sure of the long term implications of doing so. I'm really only supposed to prove a somewhat ambiguous time travel hypothesis."

Sheldon tapped his upper lip with his long forefinger. "Hmmm. Now that is intriguing. Are you saying that I, or none of us, remember this event in our future awareness? Collective? Or individually?"

She shrugged and pulled another face.

"Fascinating. Why, that is the core of a time travel paradox, isn't it? Your presence here is most obviously going to affect our present and our futures, so how is it that we are apparently ignorant of it? If you're not supposed to be interacting, and I'm presuming that directive came from me, then how exactly are you supposed to be proving my," he faltered, "his theory?"

The girl looked from Sheldon to Penny and back again. "It isn't really a theory, per se. As much as it is a deliberately taken action in order to ensure a future occurrence." She bit her lip. "I'm still saying too much. I don't think I have much more time. Really. We need to build a return time machine so that I can, well return to the future!" She looked at Penny. "You're taking Stella and me to the Blue Ivy Carter concert tomorrow!"

"Oooh! Jay Z and Beyonce's baby?"

"Yeah. So, I gotta get back."

"You have got to get back." Sheldon corrected her.

"Do we even know how to build a return time machine?" Howard asked.

Everyone looked at Sheldon. A slightly stricken look began to cross his face.

"I do, I know how." The girl replied and then she slumped sideways in the chair, unconscious again. The glass fell from her hand and shattered on the floor at Sheldon's feet.


	4. Chapter 4

"_**What if she ends up with a toddler who doesn't know if he should use an integral or a differential to solve for the area under a curve?"**_

Penny and Sheldon knelt, as though joined at the hip, beside the chair. Both reached out a hand to the girl's face and she moved slightly, pressing her cheek against their fingertips, eyelids fluttering. Raj and Howard were tag-teaming one another, sorting and sweeping up the broken pieces of glass. Leonard was sitting forward on the sofa, brows pulled together tight and hard behind his spectacles, watching the group.

Slowly Penny stood and Sheldon followed. They looked at one another, both deep in thought yet somehow still communicating through their locked eye gaze. Sheldon began to nod.

"I think she's asleep!" Penny answered his nodding, worrying at her lip with a perfectly manicured finger.

"It's really quite apparent now," he replied, frowning slightly. "Obvious, actually."

Howard was acquiescing, returned from the kitchen. "It just makes so much sense." Next to him Raj bent towards his ear and Howard began to answer in the affirmative but was interrupted by Sheldon.

"FTL desynchronosis!" he announced and the three other men appropriated suitably awe-struck expressions but Penny looked confused. Sheldon smiled at her and offered helpfully, "Time travel jet lag."

Her mouth oh-ed. "Isn't that, like, a day for every time zone you cross?"

Sheldon looked down at the sleeping form. "The calculations…." He trailed off then walked briskly to a stashed whiteboard, pulled it out, set up the easel legs and began scribbling with a dry erase marker. He had one hand fisted in his lower back, working quickly from left to right across the board. Howard and Raj moved to stand behind him, following the equations as though it were a ping-pong volley.

On the couch Leonard cleared his throat but only Penny acknowledged this with a slight turn of her shoulders. He twisted his lips closed.

"Sheldon, sweetie," Penny began and Leonard twitched and Sheldon paused. "We need to move her to a bed."

"Yes, of course, of course. I can return to this." He capped the pen and balanced it atop the board. "We can put her in my bed."

Leonard was standing. "Wait a minute. You guys aren't really buying this?" He looked around at the sold faces. "Are you?"

Raj whispered to Howard. Howard spoke, "She does seem to represent the perfect Mendelian inheritance example, extrapolating from the physical and mental characteristics of both Sheldon and Penny…"

"This is ludicrous!" Leonard's face was outraged.

Howard and Raj took a step back and Penny put her hands dangerously on her hips, looking at Leonard through narrowed eyes. "The idea of time travel? Or the idea of Sheldon and I married with a child?"

"Married?! Who said anything about you being married?" Leonard was spluttering.

"Marriage is where you draw the line on believability?" Howard smirked.

"This jealousy, Leonard," Penny pointed a finger at him, "this is why you and I will not be getting back together. Sheldon, help me get her into your room. Please."

"Jealousy?! Uh, I don't think this is jealousy. We've moved into a brand new place. This is a morbid green-eyed LEVIATHAN. Jealousy is me knowing you're out on a date with Stuart, jealousy is me thinking of those 30.96 _other_ guys, jealousy is me watching Howard blast off into outer space-"

"Technically," Sheldon interrupted, "that would be envy."

"This is not jealousy. This is something we don't even have a word for. Webster-Mirriam, verb, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral response when confronted with your room-mate and girlfriend's child from the future."

"Ex-girlfriend," Penny corrected.

Sheldon had walked over to the chair and was bending - "Use your knees," Howard instructed - to lift the girl into his arms, huffing a deep breath. Penny turned on an angry heel and he followed her down the short hallway.

She opened the bedroom door and Sheldon used his shoulder to flip on the light switch. Penny pushed past him and pulled down the bed coverlet and the sheet, plumping a pillow and stepping aside as Sheldon laid the girl gently on the bed. He stood back so Penny could unlace the low-top bubblegum pink Converses. She slipped each sneaker off the bare foot and handed the shoes to Sheldon who tucked the laces in before setting them on the floor. Penny was tracing something on the girl's foot.

"What is it?" he asked, leaning over her.

She pointed at a crescent-shaped mole just above the girl's pinkie toe. "I have a mole just exactly like that in just exactly that spot."

"Of course you do." Sheldon reached for the bedding and tugged it up over the sleeping form.

Quietly the pair stood side by side watching the sleeping shape. In the front room Leonard was getting louder and louder. Penny sat on the edge of the bed. "I do not want to go back out there."

"I will. I want to finish that equation. See if we can deduce how long she'll need to sleep before she can assist in constructing the new time machine."

"Shut the door," she said.

"I feel like we're trapped in that Twilight Zone episode-" Leonard was saying.

"'Walking Distance'," Sheldon finished for him as he entered the room.

Leonard turned on him. "Don't speak to me, Sheldon."

"Fine," the tall physicist replied and walked over to his whiteboard.

"This is a pretty elaborate prank," Leonard continued. "But I don't think I'm getting the joke."

"It's not a prank," Sheldon answered. "Pardon me, my bad, I forgot I'm not supposed to be talking to you."

"Should we stay?" Howard asked. "It's nearly one in the morning. We could get started on the return time machine."

Raj spoke up, "You're saying that we're accepting the premise that this girl is Sheldon and Penny's child from the future and we're going to construct a machine that will send her back to the future?" He giggled. "Back to the future. Wow, life replicating fiction."

Howard laughed and elbowed him playfully.

Sheldon tapped the marker in the palm of his hand, musing aloud. "I'm not certain how much we can actually do without her. She said she knows how to engineer and fabricate the machine and I can only assert that my knowledge was a result of my own future self visiting and leaving detailed technical specifications regarding the machine that is now in pieces on the rooftop."

"Yeah, about that," Leonard walked towards the group.

"If you're going to ask me to clarify something, Leonard, I must know first if I'll be permitted to reply."

Leonard ignored this. "You said that your future self told you that time travel is limited to one's own lifespan."

Howard and Raj gasped simultaneously. Sheldon blanched visibly.

"So, catch me up, buddy."

From the hallway Penny asked, "Catch you up on what, Leonard?"

"On how your alleged offspring could travel outside of the length of her own life span, before her existence." He answered peevishly but a wicked grin pulled the corners of his mouth upwards.


	5. Chapter 5

"_**You told me it's mind-blowing, so my mind is going into it pre-blown. Once a mind is pre-blown, it cannot be re-blown."**_

_Two Weeks Earlier_

"Penny?" Soft knock.

In her bed, Penny stirred slightly.

"Penny?" Somewhat-louder-but-still-soft knock.

Penny turned and opened one eye, was someone? No. Just no. Not happening. "Penny?" Sheldon's voice followed his third knuckle rap and travelled under her apartment door and through her bedroom doorway finding the whorls of her ear and sliding down inside. And knocked on her eardrum. She opened both eyes and peered at the digital clock on her bedside table. 3:23. In the morning. She groaned and dramatically threw her forearm over her eyes. She kicked off the covers and pulled herself out of bed.

This had better be good, she thought to herself, stumbling through the dark front room, shuffling in her slippers, tying the belt on her robe around her waist.

"This had better be good," she said as she pulled the door open. The light in the hallway was illuminating her lanky neighbor from behind and for a strange sleepy moment he was the man she had just been dreaming about.

"Can I come in?" he asked, walking inside.

"Mi casa es tu casa." She shut the door but before she could flick on the light switch he stopped her with his voice.

"Don't turn on the light."

He sounded strange or rather strained to her. And her hand moved away from the light switch. "What is it, Sheldon?"

"I've just had the most extraordinary experience."

In the dark her eyes rolled, but she felt her way to where he was standing. The streetlight shimmering through the gap in the curtained window over the table was barely enough to cast grey outlines of larger objects. Her outstretched hand connected with his midsection and then her hand was in his hand. She folded her fingers into his palm and his long fingers closed over her knuckles. For a long moment they stood awkwardly holding hands and she began to wonder if, perhaps, she was having a dream. A crazy hand-holding dream about Sheldon and her in the dark.

Not _that_ crazy, the less dreamy part of her brain reminded her. She had actually had several dreams about Sheldon over the past few weeks, okay more than several. The long dry spell since breaking up with Leonard for the _really-this-time_ last time had been wreaking havoc on her libido and somehow, in some unexplainable way, Sheldon had become one of the regular Trojans in her dream stable, the trophy stud if someone wanted to continue with the metaphor.

"Penny?" He interrupted her grazing thoughts.

"Yes, Sheldon?"

"Could you light one of those aromatic candles you always seem to have in abundance?"

"Light a candle? Alright, sure. Here, sit down and I'll light a candle." She shook her hand free and gently maneuvered him to the sofa and persuaded him into a seated position with a little firm pressure on his shoulders. She had had to run her hands up the front of his torso to actually find his shoulders and once there she had to dissuade herself from sliding the palms of her hands up the long sides of his neck. He sat and she sat beside him and reached for a candle and a book of matches and the soft illumination of the candle added exponentially to the mysterious feeling of the moment they seemed to be locked in.

"Is that," he paused, "vanilla scented?"

She smiled and nodded a sideways nod of her head.

"I like vanilla."

"I know you do, sweetie." She settled back against the sofa, her thigh fell against his and he didn't flinch. She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes; he seemed to be studying his hands folded into his lap. She pressed her thigh against his, a kind of test, and felt the long muscle in his leg flex and stiffen against her and she held her breath trying to decipher if this was a message of some sort. After a while she had to relax her quadriceps and her thigh fell away from his and they continued to sit side by side.

Penny was tired. Long hours at the Cheesecake Factory, longer hours responding to casting calls, attending her acting class, and then hours taking indulgent bubble baths trying to wash away whatever bad luck seemed to linger on her person. In her darker moments she felt covered in bad luck, a sticky nasty goo of romance gone wrong. Some days she wished she had never moved into the building, had never met the boys, and had never gotten so involved with Leonard. But really that wasn't the truth. The truth that shone in the mirror each time she rose out of the tepid bath and wiped at the steamy mirror with a hand towel, reflecting back to her what had taken so long to see, to accept. The truth simply put was that she should have listened to her heart when it had been whispering Sheldon's name to her and not Leonard's name. Sheldon, Sheldon, Sheldon, the rhythmic beating of it. A battered line of Shakespeare ran through her mind.

She sighed and without thinking laid her head down on his shoulder. "Sheldon, what's going on? Why are you here? What do you need?" she asked quietly.

Slowly he turned and this forced her back up into a seated position. He was turning towards her, so she pulled her legs up under her and faced him.

"I can't," he paused, his expression thoughtful and distant in the soft candle light, "really explain what's going on. I want to, however for myriad reasons" he looked at her now fully, "it's not possible. Not really. But I'm here, the reason I'm here right now, is because of what I can't explain to you. And I know that's ridiculously complicated and not at all helpful. A conundrum. So, I'll just tell you what I need."

"Okay."

A look of pain crossed over his features and Penny's heart stood up at this as though somehow her heart recognized the source of his injury. He seemed to recognize her recognition. The looked at one another across the years, across the misunderstandings, across the distance they had each kept between themselves.

Penny reached across the small gap separating their bodies and took his face in her hands, gently drawing him to her, and he came. She lifted up on her knees, pulling herself into his space. Her mouth met his square on and she kissed him on the lips, then kissed the corner of his lips, and then pressed her open mouth against his cheek, could feel the unshaved stubble there, smelled the smell that was so Sheldon and how did she even know what smell that was, and she moved her mouth past his cheekbone and whispered nonsense into his ear. She could feel him smile.

"Do you want to lie down?"

He hesitated, "Here?"

"No, not here. C'mon." She stood and reached for his hand.

"The candle," he said and she picked it up in her other hand.

She led him into her bedroom, as though a Victorian boudoir with her holding the candle aloft. She set it on the bedside table, blocking out the red led lights of the clock. They sat together on the edge of her bed. She knew that she needed to be calm and quiet but every cell in her body was shouting in joyous chaos.

"I don't-" he began.

She shushed him. "I do." She leaned over and began unbuttoning his pajama top. He stood and shrugged out of it and folded it neatly, setting it on top of her bureau. She scooted into the middle of the bed, cross-legged and patted the spot in front of her and he sat and tried and failed to cross his legs, so bent them at the knee instead and she pulled one of his feet over her lap and onto the other side of her hip and was sitting between his legs. She pulled the rope tie of her robe undone and reached up to push her shoulder free, the robe falling open.

"You're not wearing pajamas." His voice hitched slightly.

"No," she answered. "I don't always." And she looked up at him from under her eyelashes, shy for some reason now and he was looking at her nude body, his face open and vulnerable. He slowly raised his gaze up to her own and she saw how overcome he was. She whispered his name and opened her arms and the candle guttered and spent itself and the dark held both of them.

* * *

"What time is it?" she asked, her voice throaty. The window curtains were tinted with the dawn.

He was standing and buttoning his pajama top but leaned over to push the candle away from the clock on her bedside table. "Nearly six."

"Oh," she was confused, "okay. You're leaving? Where are you going?"

He sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her. "Something happened to me."

"I know, Sheldon. I was there."

He gaze shifted past her. The smallest of smiles playing at the corners of his mouth and she saw this and a warm shiver ran down the length of her spine.

"Penny…"

"Sheldon."

"I am," another long pause, "actually at a loss for words." He stood and began to pace a u-pattern around her bed. "The limited capacity to describe what I am feeling in regards to," he spread his hands out indicating everything within sight "this experience in its affinity to my existence is unprecedented. The relationship between knowledge and language is hindering the function and potential of words to describe or reflect phenomena unambiguously, bordering on metaphorical. The distinction between scientific and poetic language is suggesting that knowing and saying can interfere with one another." He stopped dead still and looked back at her. "Suffice it to say that I am somewhat mind-blown."

She smiled up at him. "That's good, right?"

He was still lost in thought. "Are there any consequences for consequences?" He buttoned the last button on his pjs. "I realize this is far too early for you to rise. Go back to sleep, Penny." He turned and she listened as the apartment door clicked softly shut.

Wriggling back down into the bedding, she reached for the pillow he had used and held it tight against herself. She closed her eyes wondering just before she fell asleep if it had all been a dream.


	6. Chapter 6

"_**Anyway, it occurs to me, if I ever did perfect a time machine, I'd just go into the past and give it to myself, thus eliminating the need for me to invent it in the first place."**_

The tale had been told in the broadest of terms, hinted at more than fully diagramed. A kind of quantum silence settled over the room, ensconcing the group of friends and lovers and ex-lovers in an emotional quark-gluon plasma, the pea-soup of physicists.

Penny instinctively placed a hand on her tummy. She had closed her eyes against tears and when she opened them her gaze was distant. "I'm…." she focused on Sheldon, "We're…"

"Wow," Howard breathed out the single word in a long exhalation. "You were your own wingman," Howard said reverentially, breaking into a wide grin. Raj nodded against the side of his head. "Impressive."

Raj leaned over, mouth against Howard's ear but his lips were not moving.

Leonard's face had gone from white to red to white again and he had his glasses in one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose and tipping his head back as though administering to a nosebleed.

"Do you have a nosebleed?" Sheldon asked.

Leonard lowered his hand and turned a glaring, injured stare on his roommate. "No, Sheldon, I do not have a nosebleed. But I am surprised, actually, that I don't. After this," he waved his hand at the space between Penny and Sheldon before waving his hand frantically in front of himself, "proverbial slap in the face."

"Leonard," Penny began and he put his glasses back on. "This is not about you."

"Yeah, I got that," he answered petulantly.

Howard stepped forward with his hand extended. "I've got to shake the hand of the man who solved the time-space continuum just so he could get laid."

Sheldon had extended his own hand but now drew it back. "That is wildly inaccurate, Howard. One does not receive the Nobel Prize in Physics because one facilitated coitus."

"Maybe not, but facts are facts. Presupposing that you are, actually, awarded the Nobel Prize."

"My future self was most adamant on that point. I will and I do."

"Alright then. How can you deny that you build a time machine in the future for the sole purpose of communicating with your past – now present – self in an attempt to," he waggled his eyebrows, "woo the girl?"

"No where and at no time did I suggest that was my sole purpose for solving the equation for general relativity; thus utilizing a closed timelike curve for personal gain."

"Wait," Penny took a step forward, "what exactly are you saying?" She kept her gaze firmly locked onto Sheldon. "This is about winning some prize?"

"The Nobel is not just _some_ prize," Sheldon said, dragging his attention away from Howard. "It is, rather, widely regarded as the most prestigious award that a scientist can receive in physics, recognizing ground-breaking discoveries. Rewarding the pioneers of the mind, if you will." He appropriated a look of smugness.

"And you and me? The young girl in that bedroom right now? Where do we fit into your reward?"

"A means to an end," Leonard answered loudly.

"Sheldon?" Penny said, her voice tremoring into slightly dangerous territory.

Howard was nodding and speaking quietly to Raj. "No, I don't think Sheldon has much experience in navigating the non-cognitive waters of male female relationships. Let's stand over here." He and Raj took several long steps back into the kitchen, behind the island.

"I would very much like to speak with Penny alone," Sheldon announced to the room, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on Penny's feet.

Leonard walked to the apartment door and flung it open dramatically. "Here's to your alone time."

Penny and Sheldon stood unmoving.

"Fine," Leonard walked out the door and shut it behind him.

Howard and Raj scooted towards the exit. "We'll just go back on up to the roof and start cleaning up that mess."

The door shut for the second time.

* * *

"Sheldon," Penny walked over to him, standing inside his personal space. He flinched slightly but held his ground. "We're preggers."

"I've always considered that reference, both the colloquial abbreviation of being with child and the pop culture insistence that an individual female's state of pregnancy could be shared as a couple as both dismissively trite and overtly sentimental-"

Penny cocked her head, her eyes narrowed and her lips beginning to purse.

"We're pregnant," Sheldon finished abruptly and sat down in Leonard's usual chair. Penny pushed past his knees and sat in his spot. After a long moment, they both stood simultaneously and switched seats.

Penny leaned towards him and held out her hand. He looked down and slowly lifted his arm and took her hand in his. He settled their joined hands on his thigh.

"Did you know?" Penny asked.

"I now know and have known many things, Penny. I'm not certain what knowledge you're specifically inquiring about."

"Sheldon, did you know I would get pregnant when you came over to my apartment two weeks ago? Did you know that?"

He focused on the cereal boxes on top of the refrigerator and began chewing on his lower lip. Finally he looked at her. "It's not easy to explain what I knew or how I knew it."

"I've got nothing but time here, and a genius to explain the hard parts to me, so please."

"Two weeks ago I woke, or was woken, from a dream." He looked at her. "About you."

"About me?"

"I've been dreaming about you in various incarnations for quite a while now."

"Sheldon, how long?"

He looked up at the cereal boxes again but his gaze was distant. "Since the night of the first day I met you. The day you moved into the building and came over to our apartment for take-out curry."

The electromagnetic laws of attraction and repulsion seemed obvious to Sheldon in that moment. While Penny recognized the human law of affinity and the opposing theory that opposites attract. Both considered all the untold longings and unintended misunderstandings, the unknown desires and unspoken injuries, the unrevealed emotions.

Suddenly, Penny shook her hand free and stood. "No. I'm sorry. Call me crazy, I know I must be - but I do think that girl sleeping in your bedroom could be - is - our daughter from the future. And I can believe that you found a way to send her back to our present, her past, whatever. I suppose, well, I have to don't I? That you and I had unprotected sex two weeks ago because, yeah, back to the crazy. And now I'm pregnant with - again - child from the future. But I'm not just going to throw all the idiotic goofy batty kooky out the window because you finally admit that you've been holding a torch for me for all these years." Sheldon was standing now, hands helplessly at his sides. Penny continued, "Why did you let me go out with Leonard? Why have you allowed us to snipe at each other all this time?" She had begun to cry. "Why didn't you just tell me, Sheldon?"

"Because I was afraid."

She wiped at her face, pressing her knuckles beneath her nose. "Afraid? Of what?"

"Afraid that you would not, and conceivably could not, take any advances on my part seriously."

"So you sent our daughter to convince me?"


	7. Chapter 7

"_**Well, we had dinner, uh, played some games, and then I spent the night. Oh, you'll be happy to know that I now have a *much* better understanding of 'friends with benefits'."**_

"No. I did not."

Penny popped her eyes at him.

"This me - that I am now? - did not contrive to send our daughter back into her own timeline-" he paused, his eyebrows briefly knitting, and looked at a spot over Penny's shoulder. "Does this apparently proven postulation of the limits of explorative time travel constitute a coup of some sort for the Catholic Church? The implications for cloning are significant, proof being that individual life is measured in the embryonic state not the fetal. And what are the implications to those who hold with reincarnation?"

Penny gently placed a hand on his arm, bringing him back from the far reaching horizons of his own mind.

He looked at her, his gaze becoming focused again. "You're right, Penny - certainly something my future self is already positing. No matter. I did not know this girl was our daughter until she herself affirmed it. I also did not fully comprehend the consequences of our – my - actions two weeks ago." He twisted his hands together, looking away from Penny. "Which is _exactly_ the kind of mind body separation I need to be working on more."

"I'll say. You - we - haven't exactly revisited that night and I've just sorta kinda been chalking it up to really amazing sleep sex, er, coitus."

"I'm sorry that I am simply not fully versed in euphemism. Sleep coitus?"

"You know, like sleep walking only-" she trailed off. It sounded ridiculous in her own ears. She had made the fully-awake decision the next morning to let the physicist set his own pace, the entire experience having been akin to a dream. But to be honest, another few days and she would have had to take drastic action. Having their child from the future appear was helping Penny make commitment decisions she had never once considered yet in her life.

"I am aware, Penny, that the experience was one so far removed from our normal social intercourse." He stopped himself abruptly and sat down again. "Oh my stars and garters."

"Sheldon? Are you okay?"

"I'm feeling a bit woozy." He looked up at her, his eyes widening. "We actually, you and I, together, we…."

"Do you need a hot beverage?" His gaze was unfocused again and Penny waved a hand in front of his face. There was no response. She pushed past his knees and sat on the couch beside him. "Sheldon?" she whispered quietly.

Slowly he turned his head, panic crinkling his eyes slightly closed. One corner of his mouth was twitching. "Intercourse…."

"Oh, Dr. Cooper," Penny said with a slyly affectionate tone in her voice. "C'mere." She bent towards him, twining her arms around his neck.

Their mouths met, for the second time since the first time in two weeks' time, not counting the uncountable times during the first time. Penny felt the electric shock of it, the pull of attraction, and the heat the kiss was generating. Sheldon's mind began writing equations one a blank mental whiteboard and with a lightning speed of thought as he formulated the gist of Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism - electric charges attract or repel one another with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them: unlike charges attract, like ones repel.

A feminine throat clearing interrupted them.

"Really? Mom? Dad? You two never change, do you?" The young girl was leaning on the corner of the hallway wall. She pushed herself off and walked into the kitchen. "What's to eat in the past? I'm starvacious!"

"It's nearly two in the morning, young lady!" Sheldon extricated himself from Penny's hold. They both stood and then followed the girl. "Peanut butter and banana sandwich?" he asked warily, watching her assemble sandwich makings on the island.

"I'm so hungry I could eat toxic waste!" She smiled at him and smashed the banana between the peanut-buttered bread slices, taking a huge bite. She waved the sandwich at him and he recoiled slightly. "We've got to, like, get started on the go-forward gizmo."

"Let me try a bite of that," Penny asked and simultaneously reached for and was handed the sandwich. "I like!"

"Both of you are speaking with your mouths full."

"He HATES that," they said at the same time and burst into identically toned laughter.

Sheldon narrowed his eyes.

The girl finished the sandwich, licking at the tips of her fingers and wiping them dry on her denim short shorts. Sheldon frowned and handed her a napkin. She shook her head in the negative, twisted her wrist and looked at her iWatch, pressing buttons, swiping, and scrolling on the clockface screen. "Okay, we need to get to work. Everything must be built, tested, and ready to go by 12:03 tomorrow morning."

"24 hours after the initial time travel experiment? Fascinating." Sheldon asked and walked into the living area, beginning to arrange whiteboards.

Raj and Howard came through the front door, their arms full of parts and pieces, and pushing the lawn mower time travel machine. Sheldon looked over at them. "Where's Leonard?"

"Up on the roof."

Penny and Sheldon gave each other a long look across the room. Howard and Raj looked at one another. All four sighed.

"Dad, you asked me to deal with this," the girl said.

Sheldon nodded at her, thoughtful, "So, I am actively manipulating the past then."

"Obviously?!" Howard indicated everything around them. "You're just getting that now?"

"What is obvious to me, Howard, is that our current distaste for and disbelief in the idea of the grandfather paradox must simply be primitive thinking abandoned once I," he cleared his throat, "solve the problematic equation of which I will surely refer to as the John Connor paradigm."

"I'm going to go talk to him," the girl said and walked out the door.

Penny began brewing a pot of coffee. Sheldon returned to his frantic scribbling. Howard and Raj cleared a space on the floor, moving the coffee table, rolling up the rug, and laying out the pieces of the time machine.

After a few minutes Howard cleared his throat. "So, you two?" He waggled his eyebrows at both Penny and Sheldon.

"Don't," Penny said, "even," setting out coffee cups, creamer, and sugar, "start." She waved a spoon menacingly at him.

"C'mon. I'm the only one, apparently, in our small band of brothers who hasn't been invited into the enemy's camp."

"That doesn't even make sense," she said, rolling her eyes prettily.

Howard nodded, his head bobbling back and forth on his shoulders. "Yeah, you're right. But still," he held up a triumphant finger, "you knew what I was talking about!"

Raj blushed, furiously stacking nuts and bolts as he removed them from mangled pieces of aluminum.

Sheldon had turned from the seemingly endless equations scrawled across three side-by-side whiteboards to listen to the exchange. His eyes fastened on the floor, the cap of the dry erase marker in one hand, the pen in the other. Slowly he raised his gaze to meet Penny's. A sparking line of electricity arced between them, each taking a step towards the other.

The front door opened and the girl walked in with Leonard. He looked around the room, his eyes narrowing at Sheldon, then Penny, before settling on the whiteboards. "Alright. I'll help with re-building the time machine." He held up his phone. "And I called Amy."


End file.
